Gucci's Marco Bizzarri and Renée Tirado on the brand’s new diversity initiative

As Gucci celebrates its Multicultural Design Fellowship Program, which will see 11 international students join its design team in March 2020 as part of its diversity and awareness initiative, Vogue sat down with the CEO and global head of diversity, equity and inclusion to find out what the move means for one of fashion’s most profitable brands

Gucci’s Multicultural Design Fellowship Program (GMDFP) award ceremony. Five students were selected by each school and accompanied by a representative on a three-day trip to Italy, where they visited Gucci’s ateliers in Florence and design studios in Rome. Their portfolios were judged by the brand’s design team, who selected 11 finalists — one more than originally planned — who will join Gucci for a 12-month fellowship in March 2020.

The GMDFP, which aims to increase opportunities for underrepresented talents and create a more diverse and inclusive workplace, is the first programme overseen by Renée Tirado — a lawyer and former chief diversity and inclusion officer at Major League Baseball (MLB) — who was appointed as Gucci’s global head of diversity, equity and inclusion in July 2019.

On the same day as the ceremony, Gucci revealed it surpassed sales expectations with a rise of 10.7 per cent to €2.37 billion (ahead of consensus analyst expectations of 8 and 10 per cent), but 2019 hasn’t all been plain sailing. In February, the company came under fire for producing a balaclava sweater that evoked blackface; shortly after, CEO Marco Bizzarri announced GMDFP as part of a four-pillar initiative focusing on diversity and awareness. Gucci apologised, pulling the design from stores and in March, Bizzarri launched the Gucci Changemakers Scholarship, which will see the brand distribute $1.5 million over four years across two scholars’ programmes. The entire initiative will now be steered by Tirado with the support of the Gucci Changemakers Council, which counts Dapper Dan, Naomi Campbell and Will.i.am among its members.

Following the award ceremony, Vogue sat down with Bizzarri and Tirado to learn more about the GMDFP, discuss their next steps to making Gucci more inclusive and find out what the word ‘diversity’ means to them.

What did you want to achieve through the students’ three-day trip to Italy?

Renée Tirado [RT]: “The aim was for the students to connect with Gucci and see the brand through Alessandro’s eyes, which is why we decided to host the event in his hometown of Rome — it’s instrumental to his creative vision. For some, it was the first time travelling outside of their home country, so to see the Colosseum and St Peter's Basilica, and have this aesthetic influence on their designs, whether it be for Gucci or their own personal work — it’s beyond experiential.”

What has been your personal involvement with GMDFP?

Marco Bizzarri [MB]: “I’ve been focused on the organisation of the global Multicultural Design Fellowship Program, such as deciding which geographic locations and schools we wanted to work with. When the fellows arrived in Italy, I looked at their portfolios out of interest, but I felt that the winners should be decided on by the design team because that’s who they’ll be exchanging with — it’s not my place to pose an aesthetic on them.”

What were the steps in the process that got the students here?

RT: “There are a lot of fashion programmes, so it was important for the tuition to be to a high standard; we sought recommendations from our Changemakers Council. Gucci’s global talent acquisition partner Noemi [Mauri], who works closely with Alessandro’s design team, was largely responsible for bringing this unique group of people together from around the world. On the first day of the trip when the students were introduced to the Gucci team, she got the loudest round of applause.”

The main objective may have been for the students to learn something new, but did the teachers become the students at any point?

RT: “To have this global perspective collectively and hear the voices of this generation’s views on the world has been really inspiring. The writer Sinéad Burke has been advising us [on] how we can make Gucci more diverse and inclusive for people with different abilities. A student from [Fashion Institute of Technology] FIT in New York spoke really eloquently about this. Hearing first-hand experiences such as these are essential to developing our strategy.”

MB: “There have been so many takeaways. The important thing is to always be open-minded and not pretend to know everything. I think that is why Gucci is continuing to evolve in terms of aesthetic and approach to business — we will always welcome people who think differently from us. No matter how successful you are, or how rich you are, you need to stay true to yourself and explore new paths.”

Renée, how has your career and life experience to date equipped you for the job of global head of diversity, equity and inclusion at Gucci?

RT: “When I graduated from law school and joined the workforce it was a very homogenous, predominantly male environment and there weren’t people devoted to making companies more diverse and inclusive. As a woman of colour who got her degree from Rutgers University School of Law — not Harvard or Yale like many of my peers who came from more privileged socio-economic backgrounds — I felt isolated and alienated. Of course, individual employees have to work hard to create a positive working environment and better themselves, but corporations need to do everything they can to support that growth. If I had a mentor in law, maybe I would have stuck with it as a career, but then everything happens for a reason and my personal experience has ultimately led me to where I want to be.

“I want to make sure that future generations are in an environment that breeds success; work is hard enough as it is. So much of this job is about negotiation and communication, and my background in law has reinforced those abilities.”

And on the flip side, Marco, what in your words made Renée best qualified for this role?

MB: “Renée looks at things in 360; she can interact with people on every level and that’s essential for this role because it cannot exist alone. It has to feed into every element of this business, which in Gucci’s case is 19,000-people strong. We want to cultivate a workforce with a strong cultural awareness by recruiting from all over the world and creating mobility for employees so they can freely move from one region to another.“

What’s next? How will it unfold from here?

MB: “We have around 150 designers working for Gucci in Rome and we not only need to make sure the 11 fellows are fully integrated, but that they are also supported outside of the studio because it’s a big culture change for them. Hopefully some of them will stay on indefinitely. This is an authentic initiative, it isn’t a marketing activity.

RT: “We have a lot of work to do between now and when the fellows come back in the first quarter of next year. There will be some homework involved for the students to make sure they feel prepared to experience a professional environment and we will track their progress and the work they do in the meantime. Internally, we need to ensure all the fellows are fully integrated when they arrive, whether that is overcoming language barriers or catering to people with different abilities. It’s Gucci’s first global [diversity, equity and inclusion] initiative, and you don’t see this type of investment and commitment from global companies in any industry. There’s no pre-existing model to follow so we are making our own and I’m proud to be a part of it.

“Beyond the global Multicultural Design Fellowship Program, we are going to be very thoughtful when it comes to new openings in the company. It’s obviously important that diversity in all its forms — from race and languages to socioeconomic and educational background — is reflected in the candidates, but that too goes for the interview panel.”

How do you define diversity?

RT: “To me, diversity is people: their perspectives, their values, their experiences, their culture, their language. Everything that makes a person, makes them diverse.”